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Chile
Index
Independence from Spain disrupted the church-state
relationship. The clergy was divided over the question of
breaking
the ties to Spain, although the most prominent church
officials
were generally royalists. As a result, the new independent
governments and the leaders of the church viewed each
other with
distrust. The development of what would later be called
the "black
legend" (a highly unfavorable view of the colonial
administration,
of which the church was an integral part), coupled with an
admiration for the progress of Protestant lands, fueled
this
distrust. Despite their misgivings about church attitudes
toward
independence, the new rulers insisted that they were
entitled to
exercise the
patronato
real (see Glossary), the
agreement
between the Spanish crown and the pope, thereby assuming
this
important royal power as well. This prerogative was
enshrined in
the 1833 constitution, which made Roman Catholicism the
established
church of the new Chilean state. Consequently, the
authorities
followed the prior practice of sending church appointments
to the
Vatican for its formal approval and to oversee the
governance of
the church. For their part, church officials expected that
the
government would continue to ban all other religions from
the
country. Moreover, they hoped to retain full authority
over
education, to keep all civil law subordinate to canonical
law, and
to continue to function as the state's surrogate civil
registry, as
well as to control all cemeteries. In addition, they
increasingly
asserted the independence of the church from the
interference of
state authorities.
This was a church-state relationship fraught with
potential for
conflict, and as the nineteenth century progressed many
conflicts
did indeed emerge. By the late 1850s, a fundamental fault
line in
Chilean politics and society had developed between
unconditional
defenders of church prerogatives, who became the
Conservatives, and
those who preferred to limit the church's role in national
life,
who became the Liberals or, if they took more strongly
anticlerical
positions, the Radicals. Although most Liberals and even
most
Radicals were also Roman Catholics, they were in favor of
allowing
the existence of other churches and of limiting canonical
law to
church-related matters, while establishing the supremacy
of the
state's laws and courts over the nation as a whole, even
over
priests and other church officials. They also advocated
the
creation of non-Catholic schools and civil cemeteries, and
they
pressed for the establishment of a state-managed civil
registry
that would be entitled to issue the only legally valid
birth,
marriage, and death certificates. By the 1880s, a decade
that saw
a break in relations between the Chilean government and
the
Vatican, all of these points of the more secular and
anticlerical
agendas had been established. However, the Roman Catholic
Church
continued to be the established church, dependent on the
state for
its finances and appointments. This led periodically to
new
political tensions.
Emerging in the 1820s, the first source of state-church
conflicts was the issue of the right of non-Catholics to
practice
their religion. The government favored allowing them to do
so in
private homes or other nonpublic places, while the Roman
Catholic
Church opposed this notion. The issue was a question of
considerable significance for more than just civil
liberties.
Independence from Spain had permitted the legal
establishment
of direct commercial links between Chile and other
countries
throughout the world. These links led to the creation,
especially
in Valparaíso, of wholesale commercial enterprises that
brought
British and other foreign nationals who were non-Catholic
to the
country, and they demanded the right to practice their
religion.
Denying them religious freedom not only created diplomatic
problems
with the dominant economic powers of the time but also had
the
potential to undermine the operations of the export-import
concerns
that handled much of the emerging country's foreign trade.
Beginning in the 1840s, the Chilean government
sponsored the
immigration of German settlers to the southern lake
district. Most
of them, contrary to the government's wishes, came from
Protestant
parts of Germany. As a result, the first Protestant
services in
Chile, mainly Anglican and Lutheran, began in immigrant
communities. Initially, they were merely tolerated by the
authorities, but in 1865 a new law interpreting the
religious
clause of the constitution that declared Roman Catholicism
as the
official state religion permitted private practice by
non-Catholic
denominations.
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
Protestant
missionaries of various denominations, beginning with the
Presbyterians, came to Chile. Although they continued to
serve
mainly the immigrant communities, they also made an effort
to
obtain Chilean converts. The Anglicans set up missions
among the
Mapuche, and these are still operating. American
Methodists founded
schools--the well-known Santiago College, which was
established in
1880, among them--that were open to middle- and
upper-class Chilean
children, especially girls. Parents seeking alternatives
to
Catholic education opted for Protestant missionary
schools. By the
turn of the century, a small community of local converts
to
Protestant denominations began to form. In 1909 a segment
of the
new Methodist group that had adopted charismatic rituals
broke off
from the main missionary body. This breakaway group became
the
Pentecostal Methodist Church, which itself split in 1934
when the
Evangelical Pentecostal Church was formed. These two
denominations
remained the principal Pentecostal groups in Chile,
although there
were many different subdenominations.
Judaism, virtually unknown in nineteenth-century Chile,
originated with the Central European Jews who arrived in
the
country fleeing persecution mainly between World War I and
World
War II. Both Jews and Protestants, as religious minorities
in a
predominantly Catholic country, were strongly in favor of
religious
freedoms and of full separation between church and state.
It was
therefore natural for them to identify more closely with
the more
secular and even anticlerical segments of Chilean society
and
politics; and it was natural for the latter to consider
them a part
of their constituency. Yet, given their religious beliefs,
strict
moral upbringing, and, among Chilean Protestants,
generally,
abstention from alcohol, these segments of the
non-Catholic Chilean
society had little in common with the broader anticlerical
groups.
In fact, on many moral issues, non-Catholics' opinions
were much
closer to those of practicing Roman Catholics. For this
reason,
although practicing Protestants and Jews tended to vote
for the
more secular parties in greater proportions than other
groups, they
generally did not have a particularly strong political
identity or
play important leadership roles, exceptions aside, in
political or
social life.
In 1925 President Arturo Alessandri Palma (1920-24,
1925, 1932-
38) pressed for and obtained a separation of church and
state. This
resolved most sources of church-state friction, but more
than a
century of conflicts had already created subcultures in
Chilean
society that continued to leave their mark on
twentieth-century
educational institutions, intellectual life, social
organizations,
and politics. The segments most distant from and even
opposed to
the Catholic Church were receptive to
positivism (see
Glossary)
and, especially after the 1930s, to Marxism. In this
sense, the
nineteenth-century fault line contributed indirectly to
the
eventual appeal among educated Chileans of the nation's
communist
and socialist parties.
During the interwar years, partly in response to the
challenges
of secular intellectuals and political leaders and partly
as a
result of new trends in international Catholicism, the
Roman
Catholic Church in Chile slowly began to espouse socially
and
politically more progressive positions. This more
progressive
Catholicism initially had its main impact among university
students, who, in the mid-1930s under the leadership of
Eduardo
Frei, created a new party that in 1957 fused with other
groups to
become the Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata
Cristiano-
-PDC). This development split the subculture that was
closer to the
Catholic Church into politically conservative and centrist
segments. By the early 1960s, a solid majority of the
church
hierarchy favored the Christian Democrats, and there was a
significant shift of voter support from the Conservative
Party
(Partido Conservador--PC) to the PDC. Following the new
thinking in
church circles, the hierarchy openly embraced positions
favoring
land reform, much to the dismay of the still-important
minority of
Catholics on the right.
The dominant consensus within Chilean Catholicism was
much in
tune with the resolutions and spirit of Vatican Council II
(1962-
65) in theological, ritual, and pastoral matters. Within
the Latin
American context, the Chilean Roman Catholic Church
quickly became
noted as a post-Vatican Conciliar church of moderately
progressive
positions on political and socioeconomic issues, and its
representatives played an important part in the
reform-minded
Medellín (1968) and Puebla (1979) conferences of Latin
American
bishops. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the church fostered
the
establishment of Christian Base Communities (Comunidades
Eclesiales de Base--
CEBs; see Glossary) in
poor urban neighborhoods.
However,
only a minority in the Chilean church subscribed to what
became
known as
liberation theology
(see Glossary).
In the wake of the military coup of September 1973, the
church
established, initially in association with some leaders of
the
nation's Protestant and Jewish communities, an office for
the
defense of human rights. Later reorganized under exclusive
sponsorship of the archdiocese of Santiago as the
Vicariate of
Solidarity (Vicaría de la Solidaridad), this organization
continued
to receive funds from international Protestant sources and
valiantly collected information on human rights violations
during
the nearly seventeen years of military rule. Its lawyers
presented
literally thousands of writs of habeas corpus, in all but
a few
cases to no avail, and provided for the legal defense of
prisoners.
The church also supported popular and labor organizations
and
called repeatedly for the restoration of democracy and for
national
reconciliation.
As the papacy of John Paul II (1978- ) progressed, the
Chilean
Catholic Church, like other national congregations around
the
world, became somewhat more conservative in outlook. In
the early
1990s, the episcopal conference was about evenly split
between
those formed in the spirit of Vatican Council II and those
espousing more conservative positions. However, this
shifting
balance did not affect the church's advocacy of human
rights and
democracy during the military regime
(see The
Church
, ch.
4).
Data as of March 1994
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